Bourbon, Distillery and Bourbon Litigation News for March 31 2026 (Part 2)

0:00A potential mega merger between Brown Forman and Perno Ricard, the latest courtroom drama involving Uncle nearest and barstown bourbon company, Fallout at LF Heritage Distilling and the 2026 Kentucky Bourbon Festival and National Bourbon Week. These are just some of the news stories we'll cover in this week's Part 2 of our episode. Hi everyone, welcome to the Bourbon Obsessed Podcast, your commercial free, and therefore money free bourbon podcast for Monday March 30th, 2026. This is Part 2 of this week's episode, where we will discuss bourbon distillery and related litigation news. And in our first part, for those that may have missed it, we discussed 23 new bourbon and other American whiskey releases this week, so you'll want to check that out if you didn't already listen. I am Ed and I am joined by my usual co-host friend and bourbon aficionado Dean Langdon. Dean, how are you doing? Doing just fine, Ed.

1:00Pretty much the same as on episode one, so that's good. And ready to talk about some litigation, because that seems to be what fills my life these days. You are a lawyer. I am. I am. I'm trying not to be, but I still am. Retirement isn't as easy as it seems, is it? Never is. No. Never is. We talked about one of the things that you did last week, did you do any other bourbon things? Actually, it can be over the last couple of weeks, because we hadn't talked. Went to a tasting, put on by the Lexington Bourbon Society for film land bourbons and rise. They sourced their whiskey, but they create a story to go with each version, if you will. And so one of the founders was there, and that was very enjoyable. The Rye was very good. They had sort of a small batch and then a single barrel of their two different variations.

2:01So that was fun time with the LBS folks. Yeah, nice. I'm sorry. I missed that. And it was the chatbot there that we had talked about. The chatbot was not there, but the chatbot was mentioned. So. Yes. And so I've done quite a bit. Yeah, tell us all about New Orleans. Well, on the way down to New Orleans, we'll start with, we stopped at Ingram the stillery and took a look at the barges, the floating rickhouses that they have there, and the visitor center that they're about to open. And they're actually built a small, this stillery as well that is going to open there. So that was really interesting. I had one. I've been a fan of Ingram since the beginning. And for people that aren't familiar, they age their whiskey on barges in the Mississippi River. So they've got sort of a unique climate and a little bit of motion and changing height with that, that the river does daily as well.

3:01So I had been very interested in seeing this. So we saw those. So that was very cool. And of course, on my to-do list is to put together some images or real or something of our visit there. And hopefully I will get to that soon. There's just been so much news. I can't believe anyone would do anything. I understand. I mean, and they just, Ingram just recently made it accessible for visitors, right? I mean, it was, was that you really couldn't just get into the barge even because they're full of barrels. And I think they've worked on making it possible to actually see what they're doing. Yeah, they actually start this month. It may actually be April 1st. They start right at the beginning of April with their visitor center, the tasting experience. And the, the visitor center, I mean, I say center, it's really, it's an historic house that they're using, which also can be an Airbnb. So you can come down there, you know, because they're a bit off the beaten. Yes. So, so you can actually stay at that if you, if you come down. And it's supposed to be quite haunted, so I don't know how I feel about this thing.

4:06But it was a very pretty house. I have a bunch of pictures of it and that's where we, we also do that, you do the tasting when you're there. And if you do a barrel pick, you also do it in the house. And I guess the ghost gets some extra votes for what you might, you know, there's angel share. There's ghost share. Yeah, yeah, there's ghost share. So yeah, so that's all very cool. And yeah, people can visit and I think, I think they'll enjoy it if they make the track down there. Yeah. And then of course, then we went to New Orleans for the New Orleans bourbon festival and added a little time at the beginning and the end and, you know, I can talk about all the different things we did all the way down there, but that would take the show. But suffice it to say, I do enjoy that festival quite a bit because it has the seminars during the day and then it's got the festival in the evening. And since it's New Orleans, it's always actually had quite a bit of food that's included in your ticket price at the festival. Generally, the food booths are interspersed between the bourbon booths. So it's actually extremely good for, you know, encouraging people to eat the entire time

5:10that they're, they're drinking. This year because they had a little logistic issue because it was in a new location and they realized it was actually on the roof of the parking garage of the Canal Street Plaza. I think it's a mall down there. And so it was a lot of space and it was a gorgeous view and it was a beautiful, beautiful night. But they didn't have power on the roof. So when they ran, got some power up there, but it wound up all being on one side. So that put all the food on one side. So next year, I guess they'll have that sorted out and it'll go back to being interspersed with the booths because it really is good. I mean, I think all whiskey festivals should have bourbon bourbon food, bourbon bourbon food. I mean, it's, yeah, it's good to keep people eating. It is. It is. Yeah. That's very important. That's interesting because because Kentucky bourbon festival really has the food in a separate location.

6:10You didn't have to sort of get off site. It's immediately off site. But while bourbon on the banks does have food more interspersed, I guess it's just more centrally located. Well, the Kentucky bourbon festivals issue is there are so many distiller, it's more distillers than all these other festivals. So, you know, they all have to be in the main area. You can't push the distilleries out into this street and things like that. So they just don't have the space. So that's what forces the vendor marketplace, the arts and crafts type stuff and other things and the food outside at the KBF. It's just, you know, maybe if it moved to someplace gigantic like the, you know, fairgrounds or something at some point, but I don't know. Everything's got its pros and cons. It's sort of cool to have it right in the middle of barge town and not move it off to the side. Exactly. I agree. I agree. All right. You ready to jump into some, let's talk bourbon. Okay. So we talked a lot of bourbon in the first episode, that won't be talking more.

7:13Problems really. There you go. So we'll start with some of the legal things. So here's a new one. Although I think we had heard grumblings about this earlier, but now it's official. So a Scott County judge has ordered the foreclosure and sale of property link to LF Heritage Distilling Company, formerly known as limestone farms. According to Janet Patton of the Lexington herald leader, the order entered March 23, sends the property at 197 Swords Road in Georgetown to the Master Commissioner for Sale. The distillery, which recently joined the Kentucky bourbon trail, is currently embroiled in multiple legal and financial disputes. KTF feels vindicated that some of the debt that doos to KTF and its subcontractors will be paid from the sale, said Eric Eaton attorney for contractor KTF, who they, oh, quite a bit too. The Swords Road orders stems from a 2025 dispute over unpaid construction bills for a distillery

8:13and bottling facility with KTF claiming a debt of nearly $787,000 and roof tech claiming approximately $39,000. In addition, the company is involved in additional litigation concerning a second property on pains depot road, where more than 5 million in leans have been reported by Lexington Lex X-18. Therabred engineering has asked for that property to be sold to satisfy over $741,000 and unpaid debts, while Woodford excavation and transport filed a lien for nearly 1.3 million for site development. This was where they were going to build their large distillery that we talked about this a long time ago, had something like 40 pot stills, and it's a very grandiose plans and a visitor center and everything. A hearing regarding the pains road depot property is scheduled for April 2nd, so this week. And so to our viewers and listeners who may not know when a bank or a contractor who's

9:18worked on a property and filed a lien isn't paid, they file a foreclosure lawsuit and once the court decides they're entitled to their money and they have a valid lien, then they send it to somebody we call the Master Commissioner to sell and that's a sale on the courthouse steps. Usually the Master Commissioner has a public auction in a room in the courthouse. There's usually limited publicity about it. When you have an operating business like Uncle nearest, Linda's usually going to get a receiver involved to keep on managing it and trying to sell the operating business. When you don't, you just have dirt or a building and no operations and the bank usually just has a foreclosure sale and they sell the property and the building on the courthouse steps. It usually brings less money than a going business or going business. So in order like this, often spurs a company to file a bankruptcy because that stops

10:23a sale like this and if they think they could find a buyer for the business or the property for more than it might sell for the courthouse steps, then they can use bankruptcy to do that. So I certainly don't know what limestone farms will do but there's nothing positive in that. If somebody, this is even less developed than the Luka Mariana property, there's not an operating distilleries, I understand it. There's often not a lot of money that goes to the contractors after the banks have been paid. So the banks are usually first and so time will tell on this but not a good result for the banks and the contractors and certainly not for limestone farms. Yeah, there was actually no mention of what's going on with the business. Now, the business basically takes place on that first property which is as far as I know it's actually the farm of the owners that are there in this out building because I was

11:26there a long while ago and in the outpilings where they do their blending and it's also where they had a bunch of barrel inventory and from what I gathered from the Kentucky bourbon trials announcement when they were just recently added to it, that was where they're calling their visitor center too. So I guess they were having some public tastings take place in there as well. So I don't know if they're still actually producing any whiskey at this point. There's no mention of inventory. I mean, they certainly had barrels. I don't know just how many barrels are the dollar value but I think there's going to be a lot more to this story. I think that comes out as this one develops. Right. Yeah, there always is as things progress. So yeah, I didn't have time to go look at their website to see if their website's active, if they're still booking tastings or anything like that. And to be clear, they could, you know, up until the point there's an actual sale and ownership

12:27of the property transfers, legally they can keep operating there but it can provide for a very sudden stop in what you're doing with all that happens. It was just your point earlier about how often they want to keep businesses going but maybe in this case, there's no business going at the moment or they feel that it's, they'd rather just have their money and be done because there's not enough value in it. But we'll see. But we do have a related story. So a Fayette County grand jury has indicted Darren Diller, Darren Dillow, operator of LF Heritage Distilling Company, formerly limestone farms, on one count of theft by deception. According to reporting from Lex 18, the indictment alleges that in August 2024, Dillow used a neighbor's farm equipment and cattle as collateral to obtain $100,000 a loan. The neighbor, William McIntosh, stated that his family only discovered the situation after Dillow defaulted on the loan and the property was facing seizure.

13:31McIntosh further alleged that Dillow falsely identified, you can't make this stuff up. Identified McIntosh's father and uncle as seasonal employees to a loan officer. I cannot believe that this would actually happen to us, McIntosh to Lex 18. It's something like out of a movie, but just the betrayal of this person. This indictment follows a recent court order for closure and sale of LF Heritage Distilling, property in Scott County. Dillow was scheduled to appear in FedCertic Court on April 24, 2026. Interesting, really. Interesting. Right. When businesses struggle and the owners look for money, sometimes they go beyond the pale of what's appropriate or legal. These are just allegations at this point, but they're not great allegations. As you said, it's sort of hard to make something like that up, right? I would be surprised if the neighbor just made that up.

14:32And if Mr. Dillow did obtain a loan, that would have been documented. It would be easy enough to show that he did that. That's certainly going to distract him from running LF Heritage, if he is running that. And so it sounds like sort of a perfect storm, and Mr. Dillow's got his hands full right now. I don't see an easy path to success here. We'll learn more about this, but it seems to be like there's more of a path to disaster, because on that first property, they've sort of mixed the business, the blending house and the tourist area. I mean, is that included in this foreclosure sale that they're going to actually sell the rest of their farm and house? I don't know how it was separated out, but even if it was a separate LLP, see if they share the property, I mean, you know, a lot more about this than I do, and we can probably wait until after that.

15:33What is it? It's only a couple days from now, the April 2nd court date, and talk about this in the more than our next episode about how it affects what they're actually living space. I mean, you can talk to you. This is probably getting too off track for now. We do have a lot of, but I mean, if you take somebody's house like that, is this one of the states where you could do that, if it's mixed in with a business, or is that still protected? It'll depend on whether it's one piece of property or two pieces of property. It wouldn't surprise me that they simply built an outbuilding on their farm, and are using that as a visitor center and so forth. The bank may or may not, and I think I haven't looked at any of the court papers to be clear, so I'm speculating, but I will before our next podcast, and do they have a lien on any equipment that's there, on any inventory that's there, or is it just on the land and the

16:37buildings? Usually, at a master commissioner's sale, they just sell land and buildings. They wouldn't be selling inventory or equipment or things like that. It can happen, but it's rare. But yes, it's possible to, when you sign a mortgage, actually, you have certain rights in Kentucky to keep property, but when you sign a mortgage, it has a waiver of those rights. So yes, the bank can certainly foreclose on somebody's home, in 2008-2009, it happened a lot. Just because somebody runs a business there doesn't necessarily protect the farm. They could have split a piece of property into two pieces, put the business on one and the house on the other, and if the bank was willing to just take a mortgage on the business property, then they wouldn't be able to sell the home, but I have no idea the specifics in this case. Right. Okay. Well, a lot to look into here.

17:38So we'll see what happens, and we'll talk about it more next time. All right. So do you want to fill us in now on our ongoing case? Let's talk about our favorite Tennessee distillery, Uncle nearest. I think it's common knowledge by now that Von Weaver filed a bankruptcy for the distillery, the property this year, I believe it was three entities she filed a bankruptcy for. The receiver prompted two things, filed a motion for sanctions against Mrs. Weaver in the district court where the receiver is pending and filed a motion in the bankruptcy court to dismiss the bankruptcies. So the receiver filed a motion to dismiss like on March 17th, the court set a hearing on March 19th, and Mrs. Weaver and her council responded. The court had a hearing and the bankruptcy court, I need to clarify which court, bankruptcy court just didn't buy it.

18:39The bankruptcy court read the order that appoints the receiver very carefully and said, nope, the district court has given the receiver the right to make all these decisions. The receiver has the powers of the officers and directors of the company, and they're the people who would make this decision. So while the district court didn't necessarily remove the weavers as officers, it took away their powers under this order, and so that was the basis for dismissing the bankruptcies. I understand Mrs. Weaver has appealed those bankruptcy court orders. The appeals move quickly from an appellate standpoint, but it's still a year, 18 months before an appeal is usually decided, so that has the effect of just sowing confusion and some sort of uncertainty with the whole process.

19:45One of the things she argued is a constitutional right to file bankruptcy, which is in our constitution, but I'm not sure that companies have constitutional rights for one thing, and I don't think the court has addressed that yet. So back in the district court, Mrs. Weaver responded to the motion for sanctions and raised some of these points. She said that she had, excuse me, like I think hundreds of hours of attorney time looking at the issue and advising her that it was okay to file the bankruptcies. And so if there's more detail on that, I would love to hear which attorneys opined that she could file a bankruptcy based on the receivership order, because I'm a bankruptcy attorney

20:48of the doing it for 35 years, and I didn't read the order that way. So that doesn't mean I'm right, but it's an interesting take on it. Well, I thought they cited a similar situation, except that what didn't as explicitly lay out what the receiver couldn't couldn't do, because they're citing a case where a company was in receivership, but they let the company, IE, someone like Fawn, file, bankruptcy for it, and the court ruled that they could in that case, but that's what they're trying to use as a precedent. Exactly. That's exactly right. And it all comes down to what does that court order say. If the Weavers had argued, I mean, there was a hearing in the district court about appointing a receiver. If the Weavers would have argued that you can't give him the power to make bankruptcy decisions, that's our constitutional right. Perhaps the court would have not approved that part of the order, but I don't think they did. And so it's, you know, and there's

21:51a, they're trying to change the order. They're trying to end the receivership. The receivers trying to bring in more companies, all those issues are still pending over there. What's, what's, I guess, the burning issue right now is the sanctions, the receivers' motion for sanctions asking for like $75,000. And as I mentioned, she responded with these arguments. The court then filed a reply that said, well, not only was she clearly wrong, but, you know, I have been getting all sorts of communications from employees and vendors and potential purchasers and all of them are saying, we don't understand what's going on. Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, this is so some, some immense confusion. And if you're trying to get the most value for something and it's confused about just who controls it and what it's going to do, you're not making it more valuable. So the receiver said, hey, not only don't, you

22:52know, ask for to pay money. I want you to issue a gag order to prohibit her and her husband and their company grant sigma, excuse me, grant sigma to just to prevent them saying anything about this, about the process, about the company. And so in response to that, the judges should order the said, all right, receiver, you know, show me what, you know, what you're complaining about. Show me the materials that you're complaining that she has done, that she has put out there. And then the weavers have, they've got to do that by the 9th of April, the weavers have through April 16th to respond. And then the judge will make a decision. So that's a side show. The real bigger issue is will the receivership end and, you know, well, these other companies come in. There's another side show about their property in Martha's Vineyard. They're fighting about how many, how many appraisers are available to appraise

23:52the property because the court ordered the receiver to identify some appraisers to do just that before he sells it. So a lot of a lot of stuff going on in that case, hard fought on both sides. It's, I'm concerned that the company and or farm credit ends up paying the receiver's expenses. And at some point, you know, farm credit may not be happy that they got themselves where they are. They may have been, may have been better off just foreclosing like what's happening to limestone farm or I love heritage. So well, that's some of the strategy. I mean, it seems like the weaver strategy from the beginning has been to drag things out, throw monkey wrenches in at every opportunity, try to get public opinion on their side. And because of that and all the social media and everything else, create, you know, being very vocal about everything, just create a cloud of confusion around it right from the start. So I mean, maybe that

24:56is the strategy just to make it go on long enough that the farm credit is going to just say, all right, let's just end it. Yeah. And that's certainly possible. I mean, you know, we've heard early on that, you know, the weavers were talking to investors, talking to potential buyers. If they really do have somebody lined up to buy this business, you know, not necessarily from them, but maybe for them. And they can take actions that reduce the value and their friendly buyers get a better deal. Yeah. You know, that's that that happens sometimes. But, you know, I'm not about to say that's that's clearly the strategy. It could just be that they really, really, they grew this company. They built it. They created it and you know, you don't easily let go of something that you have built and create. Well, also ironically, when I was down in New Orleans, she was actually down in New Orleans visiting a bunch of liquor stores and signing books and signing bottles and and all that. And I saw some of that on

26:01social media while I was there. Yeah. So there's still a lot of social media going on on her. Yeah. She, I mean, I watched, she posted a pretty lengthy video once she filed the the bankruptcy claiming the receivership was over and you know, very, very emotional heartfelt and all that. Yeah. And I'm sure that that's what the court's going to see. That's what the receivers going to show the court. My guess is that the court is not spending a lot of time on Instagram or Facebook looking at this stuff. But that's the thing that the main thing that caused all the the confusion because she said in no uncertain terms, the receiverships over and we have our company back all this kind of which was obviously not a bit premature. Yeah. It's a little geeky, but there's a provision in bankruptcy law that says if there's a receiver in possession of the property of a company, the bankruptcy court has to order the receiver to turn it over. It doesn't happen automatically. I was involved in a case where there was a receiver we filed a bankruptcy for the

27:05company. We had an argument whether the receivers should turn over the property or not in receiver one. The receiver got to keep property and I had the same result. The court dismissed the bankruptcy. So you just you never know, right? Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens as these court dates come and go. Yeah. Yeah, right now we're just sort of waiting for the judge to make rulings and you know, we'll hear about those when they happen. I know. So let's go on. Yeah. Yeah. Arstown bourbon company because last time we talked about their has vice president of human resources, missanders, filing a what I'm going to call a discrimination lawsuit against them. It was much broader than that, but we got to describe it somehow. That was in early to mid-February on March 6th. Arstown bourbon filed a motion to strike the complaint, which sounds very active and violent, but it's really just asking the court to say there's stuff in here that just doesn't belong, right? Important and scandalous content and really

28:09they focused on the privacy of the employees that were named in that complaint and some of the information that came out about those employees and the court bought that argument and you know, ordered the ordered missanders to file a revised complaint that took out some names, used, you know, gender descriptors instead of names and sealed the original complaint. So if you hadn't looked at it, didn't have a copy, you won't be able to get that anymore. There were some technical arguments over that motion. Some interesting things that came from that was missanders says she gave barstown bourbon company a copy of that complaint back on December 4th. That's about two months before it was filed and so and then barstown bourbon

29:10waited like three weeks before they filed this motion to strike. So I'm just curious as to why barstown bourbon company didn't address it before it was filed, didn't address it more quickly because these folks' names are out in public now and allegations about them and sealing it at this point is, you know, sort of the horses out of the barn kind of thing. But do you think that they did that because of the next thing you're going to talk about? Because now they can say she violated her non-disclosure agreement and violated terms of her contract with the company. So they might have decided that letting those names out even as damaging as that could possibly be gave them the fuel that they would need to fight the rest of this. Do you think that's what happened? It very well could be. Yeah, because, you know, one of the things that supported the motion to strike was that the Sanders filed a non-disclosure agreement and she breached it when she did this

30:15in her response. She said she didn't file a non-disclosure agreement and pointed out that they hadn't attached it. And so of course barstown bourbon company promptly filed it with the court showing that where she has signed a non-disclosure agreement as well as other documents about her employment. And so barstown bourbon went ahead and filed an answer and a counter claim. And that counter claim, as you just said, says well she breached a contract. She violated her non-disclosure by laying all this stuff out in the court pleadings. And barstown bourbon asked the court to enjoy her prohibit her from doing it again, right? And so they did that on March 20th, four days later Sanders attorneys filed an emergency motion to dismiss that counter claim saying it was what we call a slap suit, a strategic litigation against public participation,

31:16you know arguing that she's they're trying to quiet her to keep her from expressing things about illegal activity, which is you know you're just protected or to conduct a lot. You can you can make claims about illegal activity in the court system. So that motion comes on for a hearing in early April. We'll see what the judge does with that. But it's starting out pretty hot and heavy there. One other aspect of that you remember Pritzker PPC is a party to that lawsuit along with Christian Brickman. They filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, basically saying we weren't her employer. We didn't even know about this. She contacted us after she had been told she was going to be terminated. She didn't have a claim against us. That motion is set to be heard in early May. So that will hang out there for a while. But from what we talked about previously,

32:16you had said that for people that don't know, Pritzker's sort of the main investor and essentially owns Lofted Spirits, which is what the parent company of Boston, Birmingham company in Green River. But you had said as an investor in a company, even if you're a very large investor, you're not responsible for how the company's run. You're just so based on what you told me last time, they have pretty good grounds to get themselves dismissed from this, right? I think they do. There is a theory where a parent company can be held liable for a subsidiary company's actions. You look at various things like a level of control if there's overlapping management. Does the owning company dictate policy for the subsidiary? There's things like that. I expect that misunderstanders will raise those or her attorney will raise those when they respond to that motion to dismiss. We'll just see what the judge does. There could be that it's

33:18just not clear enough from whatever evidence is in front of the court for the judge to rule and he'll say, well, we're going to have to have discovery. People have to find out more about this and bring it back to me before I can decide. Because I guess my understanding, not that I have any knowledge of the first-hand knowledge of the inside workings of between Vars time bourbon company and Pritzker, but was that when Pritzker, everybody was happy with this deal at Vars time bourbon company because essentially they were going to still be able to do business as usual and Pritzker wasn't going to have a particularly heavy hand in it. That was what I was led to believe initially, which again gives them support for being protected, I guess. I guess that'll all come out. Just how involved were they? Did they have? I remember one of the allegations that Miss Sanders made was that some people from Pritzker did come down

34:23to Vars time bourbon shortly before she was fired, but I don't remember. I don't think she said they were involved in the actual firing termination. I think it's a hard fight to keep Pritzker in this lawsuit and even harder to win if you do manage to keep them in. Well, I guess we'll see. All right, so any other updates for us or anything new on the litigation front? Real quick on the Luka Mariano case. I think last time we talked about it, they had extended deadlines for things to happen and that has happened again. Now the deadline for bids is April the 6th. If there are bids and apparently there have been any so far, there would be an auction on the 8th, a hearing in mid-April and they hope to close a sale by the end of April. So, hope springs eternal, but you got to have somebody wanting to buy it before you have sales and auctions. So yeah. Oh yeah, that's right, Gary County. Gary County, of course, we know Sazrack bought out the bank's position. They haven't taken any action that I'm aware of in that case

35:28yet. I assume they're still getting their arms around what they bought and think about what they're going to do with it, right? I mean, they don't own the property. They have a note and a mortgage against the property. So they would have to proceed with a foreclosure action. There's still a receiver in place. I assume the receiver is still looking for buyers, but a lot of that stuff happens behind the scenes and you don't see it in the court records. All right. Then you said there's a couple of new cases. There were a couple of new cases in the past month that aren't necessarily about distress in the bourbon industry. Several years ago, employees at Woodford Reserve tried to unionize and to counter that, Brown Forman gave them a $4 an hour raise and a bottle of bourbon, and the union argued that they were interfering with the union election by doing that. That goes before the National Labor Relations Board, an administrative board,

36:30and that board found that, yes, they had interfered with the election and that the remedy for that was to recognize the union, to actually put the union in place at Woodford Reserve. Brown Forman didn't like that result. They appealed it to the sixth circuit. The sixth circuit agreed in part. They said, yes, that was interference with the election. That was improper, but that does not automatically mean the remedy is to recognize the union and what they did is they sent it back to this administrative body to decide if a fair election could be held rather than just recognizing the union. That will play out over the next several months, but I don't honestly know if there is a union in place at Woodford Reserve or not. I'm assuming everything was on hold while this has been litigated. One other one, real quick, was we know that we have Brod Brothers bourbon, which the company was actually victory-global, and Fresh Bourbon, both African-American owned, both distillers in Kentucky. They have been

37:35fighting over a claim about the first African-American owned distillery in Kentucky. They bro sued Fresh over that. The trial court gave a judgment in favor of Fresh saying that they're not false statements, they're not misleading statements, and so you're not responsible to Brod Bourbon for your statements. Brod Bourbon didn't like that. They appealed to the sixth circuit again, and the sixth circuit basically agreed with the trial court saying, there's different levels of false statements. There's outright false statements. There's misleading statements. It depends on the context and how you couch it. I mean, Fresh Bourbon had a Senate resolution recognizing them as the first African-American distillery in Kentucky since the Civil War. Interestingly, the way that Fresh Bourbon wrote that was not the way the Senate

38:40wrote it. The Senate actually made it a little bit more glorious than Fresh Bourbon had, and so one of the things the court went to is said, you know, Fresh Bourbon didn't write this. That's the Kentucky Senate. Brod Brothers, you can't hold Fresh Bourbon liable for something that they didn't do. That was just a small part of it. The bottom line is that no liability on Fresh Bourbon's part to Brod Brothers for their claims and allegations about being the first distiller. Court went into a really detailed explanation of how they started distilling when they built distilleries, when they used somebody else's bourbon, when they distilled their own, if somebody else's distillery, all that stuff that I'm not going to bore our listeners with, but it was very detailed examination of it. Sort of they both still making that claim. Is that... That's a great question. I do not know. I mean, one of the things that came out is

39:41Michael Vitch was apparently one of the witnesses or the experts in this case, and he was asked, you know, can you say for sure that there wasn't an African-American distiller before either of these? And he said, no, I can't. And so that leads to a conclusion that, well, they can both claim it, because you can't say it's untrue. Just something. You know, just, I got to be able to nail down, so. And there you have it. All right. I guess we can move on to... Let's move on. Enough about the lawsuit. And these other stories are pretty quick. So the International Wine and Spirits Competition, IWSC, will return to Bardstown, Kentucky from June 1st through 6th, 2026, for its third annual North American Spirits Judging. This year, the categories are expanding beyond North American whiskey and ready-to-drink spirits to accept Jen, vodka, rum, and liqueurs from across the United States.

40:42Founded in 1969, the London-based IWSC evaluates more than 12,000 entries annually from over 90 countries. The panel of judges, led by Dom Davies, Master of Wine, will evaluate entries using the same rigorous process as in the UK, including double-blind tasting and panel discussions. Metals awarded include bronze silver gold and gold outstanding, with top-scoring products advancing to the trophy judging round. Winners will be revealed at the IWSC Awards celebration in November 2026 in London. I think that's a good recognition of the importance of Kentucky to the spirits industry worldwide, that they come here for a portion of this and it's got to be good for our economy and good for our reputation, right? I just think it's weird that so who do you get for judges? I mean, because they list the judges on there and I think it's quite

41:47difficult to be an expert in every spirit and liqueur type. I mean, I just think that that's interesting and other issues are also when you have people from other countries judging US-made spirits. I mean, our things taste different than the spirits made, even if they're predated by other things like gin and other countries. But our spirits have evolved to take on their own form that American drinkers, especially the biggest example, bourbon versus scotch or Irish whiskey. This seems like it would be a difficult thing to judge. I can't imagine what your palate would have to master to go across all the different categories of spirits. I agree with you. I mean, they should have, in my opinion, whiskey, clear liquor, liqueurs are really

42:48something different from either of those, right? And arguably so we're ready to drink. Well, that was in their last year, which I thought was interesting and I did do, it's not really disclosure because it doesn't affect this third up, but I did do a day as a guest judge in this last year. Unfortunately, it was just the bourbon and American whiskeys. I didn't have any of the RTDs in my category, which I've never drank an RTD in my life. I was sure you can say, oh, I like it. I don't like it, but I don't have my finger on the pulse of what the RTD drinker is looking for to say that something's the best or worse because my opinion is almost meaningless for pretty much meaningless for that. If I'm not the one who drinks this that far all the time, and people don't want me gauging a gender of vodka because I don't drink either one of them and I would have no idea if it's good, bad or otherwise. Maybe we'll reach you out to them and see if they have, you know, judging, judge selection guidelines. What are

43:52what those were like? Well, my understanding of this is that they're not alone in doing things this way. I thought like in San Francisco, you know, that arguably the most prestigious of the competitions, they have people judging across these spirit categories as well. Now again, that's second hearing information, and so I could be wrong, but that is what I had heard. So, and again, I had the same reaction. I thought that would be quite difficult to do. And so, you know, if we have listeners and viewers who judge at this level, let us know. We'd love to find out how that works. I would like to know. All right. So, moving on. So, chicken cock whiskey has announced the relaunch of its circa 1856 tasting room in Louisville as the coop spelled C-O-U-P-E not coop as in C-O-O-P, but we all get the play on chicken coop. So, very clever bravo. Here we have Edwin's speak easy style cocktail destination in the heart of

44:54the city. We wanted to create a space that celebrates the spirit of classic speak easy culture, while giving guests a fresh way to experience chicken cock whiskey through thoughtfully crafted cocktails, events, and community gatherings, set Emily Zabarowski, director of brand experiences. The opening weekend began March 26 with a mover and shaker pop-up featuring Nick Hogan, followed by a formal menu reveal from Barlelead Kelly Nelson on March 27. The celebration concludes March 28 during Nulu Bachfest, which actually sounds interesting, where circa 1856 will sponsor the chicken cock whiskey goat steaks, a lively goat race featuring the brand's own contender, whiskey the kid. So, there's enough plays on words in this one new story to last those for a week, but yeah, interesting. We'll have to check that out next year. It sounds like I've heard about the Bach thing in lieu of what I've never been, and yeah,

45:58it sounds like they've taken advantage of, you know, a sort of co-aventing there, which is good, and I hope they continue to draw visitors there in Louisville as well as at their shop in barge town. Well, I thought this was interesting because that circa 1856, I'm pretty sure it was this year, we talked about it because it opened, I thought, in Louisville earlier this year, and I actually thought it had a speak easy unit. So, I guess they're already sort of rebranding how it's been done. You haven't been there. I've not been there. No, I haven't been to that one either. Been to the one in barge town. It's nice. But I haven't been there. So, you know, if your fingers on the pulse of what's going on, and you decide to rebrand, I mean, that's great, you know, you've got to be fresh, you got to keep it fresh for folks to keep them coming to the door. Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely want to check it out. All right, now our last, we have a few other event related things, but our last actual news story has been a very big one in the news. So, we've saved it for last. On March 26, 2026, Brown Foreman confirmed it is engaged in preliminary discussions

47:06with Prenoregaard, regarding a potential strategic combination of the two companies. In a simultaneous statement, Prenoregaard also confirmed the talks, although both entities cautioned that there is no certainty a transaction will occur, or what the final terms might be. Find the announcement. Writers reported that Prenoregaard shares rose on the news of the potential merger, and then Brown Foreman's did as well. Both companies stated that they do not intend to make further comments until a formal agreement is reached or discussions are terminated. And there's been a lot written about this since except I don't think we know any more facts and are just simply stated here, which is why I didn't go into any more detail. Yeah, I agree. I mean, they're both pretty matter of fact about, they've knowledge the fact they're talking, but until they reach at least a tentative agreement, there's not much else to talk about, they don't want to, certainly they don't want to tilt the market or inflate or deflate stock prices,

48:13but it's indicative of the state of spirits worldwide, isn't it? When you've got two big companies like this talking to each other, and it's not clear what it would be. It could be a merger, it could be an acquisition, it could take all sorts of different forms. It's unique in that they're both really family companies. One family owns a majority state, Silobrown Forman. I don't think in Pernod Riccardo, they own a majority state, but they're one of the biggest shareholders, the family members. So there's almost not just emerging or a combination of businesses, but families and how is that going to work out? How will those folks get long if something like this happens? So really interesting to see how that happens. If it happens, how quickly it happens and all those things. So I know our national business reporters will

49:17stay on top of that. Yeah, I mean, this will be a story that I'm sure we'll hear a lot more of, and yeah, I mean, they're sort of similar, but different. I mean, Brown Forman is a publicly traded company, but my understanding is the family owns virtually all of the voting shares of the stock. So anybody else that buys it, just you can reap the benefit or share it in the losses, but you don't have the say in how the company's run. But I don't think that's the case in in Pernod Riccardo. I think that one truly is run like a public company. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. So all right. And then now we just wrap up with a little bit of event news. So the third annual National Bourbon Week returns to Bardstown, the Kentucky, the bourbon capital of the world from June 14 to 21, 2026. Kicking off on National Bourbon Day, the event features 10 partner distilleries, including new additions, limestone branch, distillery and powder jane distilling company alongside log still distillery, heaven hill, gym beam, preservation and old steel house,

50:23Luxrow makers and Barton 1792. According to Sam Lacey, executive director of the bourbon capital alliance, the week will include the return of the bourbon capital mashup, which was their Friday night party, which was really good last year. And multiple special releases from distillery partners tickets for the bourbon capital alliance partner distillery events and the mashup went on sale on March 26. And some of those events were had very limited amount of tickets. Some are gone, but many tickets are still left. And I'm pretty sure there's still tickets to the mashup, so people can can get them there. And the website is national bourbon week that I think it's a .com, but it could be org. But I like National Bourbon Week into your search engine. It'll find it for you. I'm sure. Or I have all the details also on my website and so you can just go to bourbonobsess.com. And I did not make that last year and I didn't have a chance to get tickets this

51:27week because I've been swamped, but I need to go as soon as we're done and see if I can at least get tickets for the mashup this year because that sounded like a wonderful event. It was a really good event last year. I'm looking forward to that. And yeah, I'm pretty sure there's still tickets to that. There are tickets because some of the other events are for hundreds of people, but some of the events well for like 12, which was a really cool event. That's a blending class with Jane Bowie of Powder Jane. There's actually two 12 person sessions for that that take place at their distillery. Needless to say, those sold out immediately. I would hope so. And there's also a brunch that takes place on Father's Day at Barton 1792, which was also only for 24 people. I mean, you know, these have obviously have constraints on how many people can come because of what they are. And you know, that sold out immediately as well because you can't go to Barton 1792 anymore,

52:30even though there's rumors that they're going to have tours again, that has not happened. And you know, unless you've done a barrel picker went there for some other reason, you haven't been there. It's definitely worth going to. So that's going to be another. Both of those are going to be very cool events. But then there's the beam Lou, which they had in the past. That's a much larger event. There's a beam has one of their usual dinners on the Thursday that week as well. Lux Row has a barbecue. That's going to be another big event. And I think it's a barbecue, but it's another big evening event. Like, uh, Heaven Hill has another large event. So there's still plenty of things to, to, to go to even though those smaller ones, I think, are sold out. Plus, it never hurts to just keep checking back. Anyway, because people cancel and tickets reappear like the second session for James Bowie got added on. So people who kept checking back after it sold out for the one day did get tickets for the second day. So you never know, a third one could be added on who

53:33knows? It's obviously a good advice. Very popular. You see something, you see something sold out, check back, because that's a good way to get stuff. Yeah, definitely check back. People cancel, plans, chains, things get added. There's always something. All right. And then lastly, the Kentucky bourbon festival has announced that tickets for its 35th anniversary celebration will go on, sale April 14th with early access for bourbon insiders on April 13th, which I'm pretty sure everybody's a bourbon center by now, since you just have to sign up for the email. And, um, so, uh, the, the 2026 festival will take place September 10th through 13th in Bardstown, Kentucky, and will feature multiple ticket tiers ranging from general admission bourbon taster passes to premium VIP experiences, including the Oris Presidents Club. Attendees will have access to sampling from more than 60 Kentucky distilleries, exclusive single barrel selections, educational programming, and special release bottle purchases. Ticket prices range from $225

54:35for general admission weekend passes to, we'll call it $7,000 for the top tier VIP experience, the Oris Presidents Club. And, uh, again, you can find all the details on the Kentucky bourbon festival website or also on bourbon obsessed.com. And, and it, it's really the, the mother of all bourbon festivals, right? If you've never been, you, you should go and it's not a heavy lift to become an insider. You just have to give me your email address and you'll, you'll get the, you know, the early ticket notice and, uh, and there's, there's, I think there's like a Sunday ticket too, you can get if, you know, if you, if you're not in for three days of bourbon sampling, because I'll be the first to admit that the third day can be tough. But the third day's actually pretty good because it, well, it's the Sunday taster, but it's good because, you know, many people have actually left by that point or, you know, have, have, so it's, it's, it's much less crowded than, it is. It is. Right inside are pretty crowded. Saturday's the busiest. Right. Yeah,

55:35Sunday's really nice. It's, it's more laid back and like I say, a lot of people have left and it's just, uh, I find Sundays, it's, uh, some roads most enjoyable day. So yeah, Sundays a good day, and then, um, the Thursday night bourbon in the air is always really good, but those, you, if you get a VIP ticket, you get a ticket to that. Otherwise, there's only just a very limited number that people can buy all a cart because that, and they sell that really quickly as well. Yeah, but anyway, so, you know, I think people, a lot of people are stressed out about getting tickets for this since last year, you know, VIP sold out in like minutes and general admissions sold out by the end of the first weekend, when normally they go on sale in April and general admission does sell out completely until August. So, right. It was, it was, it was in sand last year. So, you know, the intention to see because, you know, there has been a downturn in the industry. We'll see if there's a downturn in interest or if it's still strong, um, you know, and how quickly these sell out. So,

56:37I can't wait to see. I hope they sell out right away, but, you know, I will tell. Right, right away after we get tickets. Well, there's that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because they, they, they really sold out very quickly last year. And I don't think there's going to be a downturn because people are still interested in the experiential part of it. It's just not necessarily as interested in buying every bourbon that came out and, you know, spending lots of money on that. But people are still interested in the, in the experiences. So, I suspect it's going to be as competitive as it, as it was last year. And then, lastly, there were two other quick news stories, which I'll just turn on here because they were, they were sort of interesting. They didn't make it into the newsletter this week, but they'll be in next week. So, you get an advanced notice on that. So, I thought this was, and really, they probably only made it in because they're related and both came out. If I had just seen one, I might not have been super excited. So, the first one is Holland America Line and Jefferson's

57:41bourbon have announced a first of its kind partnership to age whiskey at sea across the cruise lines entire fleet of 11 ships. Announced on March 27, 2026 to coincide with International Whiskey Day, the collaboration marks the first time the Jefferson's ocean aged at sea bourbon series has partnered with the cruise line. Seems hard to believe, actually, that they're thinking not long to do that. Beginning in March 2026, Jefferson started loading one barrel of bourbon onto each ship, where it will sell for a minimum of six months. This partnership with Jefferson's bourbon is another way we're setting ourselves apart through experiences that are too good to hurry through, said Drew Falk, director of Food, Embevered, Revenue, and Innovation at Holland American Line. Founder of Jefferson's Tray Zoller added, by placing Jefferson's oceans barrels on their cruise ships, we're diving into a quest to see how different routes and voyages, meaning different climates and vegetation, influence the taste, smell, and mouthfill of our whiskey.

58:41Each barrel will yield approximately 150 to 300 bottles, and unfortunately, for us, will be only available to guests aboard the Holland American Line in 2027. So unless we have... Well, we do have friends that take a lot of cruise. Maybe some of you guys can bring me back about because that's not going to be me, and then I'll do the next one, and then we can just talk about them. So the next one is, Miloam and Green Whiskey has initiated a controlled aging study in partnership with Regent Seventh Seed's cruises aboard a 188-day world cruise. That's clearly something to talk about in itself. According to Emily Capiello of Forbes, the experiment features one barrel of bourbon traveling on the Seventh Seed's mariner to experience constant maritime motion and sea air across various global climates. To measure the environmental impact, three land-based control barrels from the same distillation batch are maturing simultaneously

59:43in three distinct locations. Well, the first is the Maum and Green Distillery in Blanco, Texas. The second is a warehouse in Kentucky, and the third is a site in New York. Master Belender had a green stated the studies designed to push the boundaries of how environment shapes flavor by comparing the maritime age-spiriting against those aged in different terrestrial humidity and temperature profiles. So this is more of an outright science experiment. The results of the 31,000 nautical mile journey will be evaluated once the voyage concludes in 2027, but I'll ask again, the final release will be limited and exclusive to guests who are part of the journey. So unless we sail on this world cruise, we don't get to buy. Well, that's true, but there's going to be four barrels there because there's going to be three that are in various places in the country. So it's not clear to me if they're going to have those just available

1:00:43for cruise guests also, and it may be because a cruise ship holds lots of people. Regions ships are a little bit smaller than some of the other ones, but it also dawns on me that I don't know what kind of ships Jefferson's has used in the past to put their bourbon out on the ocean. My guess is it would be some kind of freight freighter or something like that. Didn't you visit there six, like just a few months ago? I visited their KDA. I mean, visited the distillery, but it didn't really, nobody asked specifically what kind of boats do you all use. Cruise ships are pretty stable. There's, you know, I would argue that being on a barge on the Mississippi is probably getting more agitation than a barrel on a cruise ship. Where is it in the cruise ship? You know, if it's in a climate-controlled

1:01:44state room down in the, you know, down in the hold, is really not being exposed to the different climates a whole lot. So all these questions, I think there need ideas. I like the world cruise better than the, you know, the 11 holiday cruises, but that's just me. Well, apparently on the America, I mean, I didn't look into all this stuff, and I have not taken a cruise ever, but apparently the Holland America line has its own single barrel program in the first place, so they didn't just pull this out of the air. It actually fits in, and it sounds like for both of these, there's going to be like a little sampling and education around these barrels, you know, for the people on the cruise ships while this experiment is taking place. And in answer to your Jefferson's question, they've been on a variety of different things, and I think those first ones were just in like some sort of container just on the front of, wasn't it that shark resource vessel? I mean, they have pictures of that when you go there. That was a bill. Yeah. That was, I think,

1:02:45the first couple, and then it changed to, you know, like they did the riverboat down the Mississippi, and then back up the Atlantic coast, and it's been like a variety of things, but apparently a cruise ship wasn't one of them. So the other ones did have significant motion, at least certainly the ones last to the deck. I'm like, small boats originally, so it's probably variable, but yeah, your point is true. The region seven seas, well, I'm not familiar at all with any of these, so I don't know what their sizes are, but I know that cruise ships can be gigantic, but I guess. Yeah, so I've been on one cruise and it was a region seven seas cruise, and it's not a huge, it's not one of those huge cruise ships, right? I mean, it's not small, but it's, I want to say it's, you know, hundreds versus thousands of people. So, you know, the Honda America is going to be the thousands, right? Right, right. But anyway, interesting, but unfortunate that we're not trying. I mean,

1:03:46maybe the model green. So I've talked about this in the past. They recently did, was it last year, the series called the, it was in a series, a set called the answer. So it was the same idea. They had the exact same whiskey distilled from the same mash bowl and batch in barge town bourbon company, and then part of the batch went to blanco, Texas to age, and the other batch part remained in Kentucky. And so they bottled it in 200 milliliters bottles and sold it as a set. So you could compare them side by side. So I would suspect this is going to be a four bottle set, you know, 200 milliliters. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. But so in which case, it seems unlikely. We won't get any. Yeah, we see. There may be a small opportunity to get some of them, because I bet all my cruise passengers are going to buy it. I don't know, they'll have been together on a boat for 180 days. I can't

1:04:47personally imagine that, but that's right. No, I can't either. And yeah, I would wonder, I mean, if I'm paying for a world cruise, I would sort of expect this to come grottis. And I wouldn't have to pay extra for this bourbon sample. That should sort of be one of the swag things I get for going on a world cruise for six months, right? Who knows? I wouldn't even begin to guess what 180 day world cruise costs, but yeah, probably not cheap. No, I'm sure it's not sure. So yeah, it seems like perhaps whiskey could be included in the part, or at least be an add-on. Right, right. Yeah, $150,000 plus 100. I don't know. Pure conjecture folks. All right. So I guess that's this turned out to be a longer show than I thought, but we apparently had more to cover than I thought. And we get lawyers talking about legal cases and it gets lengthy, you know? Yeah.

1:05:48Well, it's a good thing we broke this into two parts. So, you know, yeah, so hopefully we'll get back on track to having single episodes that are less than an hour in length next time, but this week you get a special treat, you get to hear us twice. So that about does it for this two-part episode. I hope you have enjoyed part two of this week's bourbon obsessed bourbon news podcast, your commercial free, and therefore money free bourbon podcast. If you missed it, be sure to listen to part one of this week's episode where we discuss 23 new bourbons and other American whiskeys. Also, be sure to like and follow us at your preferred podcast providers so that you don't miss an episode. And don't forget to tell all your friends too. You can also head over to bourbonobsessed.com to check out some of our over 350 bourbon reviews and over 50 distillery write-ups. While you are there, you can also sign up to have my newsletter delivered directly to your inbox. Finally, I can also be found on Instagram at bourbon, Underline Obsessed, and on Facebook at Bourbon Obsessed. And we'd love for you to follow me there as well.

1:06:51Dean, where can they find you? People find me on Instagram, I'm Dean of Bourbon, and while I post them frequently, I try to make it interesting so it might be something you haven't haven't run across before. I appreciate it if you have the time to follow me. Alright, there you have it, and we'll see you next time, folks. Cheers, bye everybody!